Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning

Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism

Edited by Paul Murray

Draws on the expertise of an internationally regarded team of authors, representing a diversity of denominational perspectives and disciplinary expertise to give comprehensive and balanced coverage of ideas

Provides readers with fresh and distinctive perspectives on the ecumenical endeavour in general and contemporary Roman Catholic ecclesiology in particular

Helpfully structured into five sections with explanatory preface for ease of use

Includes a foreword and original essay by His Eminence Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning

Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism

Edited by Paul Murray

Description

This volume proposes a fresh strategy for ecumenical engagement - 'Receptive Ecumenism' - that is fitted to the challenges of the contemporary context and has already been internationally recognised as making a distinctive and important new contribution to ecumenical thought and practice. Beyond this, the volume tests and illustrates this proposal by examining what Roman Catholicism in particular might fruitfully learn from its ecumenical others.

Challenging the tendency for ecumenical studies to ask, whether explicitly or implicitly, 'What do our others need to learn from us?', this volume presents a radical challenge to see ecumenism move forward into action by highlighting the opposite question 'What can we learn with integrity from our others?'

This approach is not simply ecumenism as shared mission, or ecumenism as problem-solving and incremental agreement but ecumenism as a vital long-term programme of individual, communal and structural conversion driven, like the Gospel that inspires it, by the promise of conversion into greater life and flourishing. The aim is for the Christian traditions to become more, not less, than they currently are by learning from, or receiving of, each other's gifts.

The 32 original essays that have been written for this unique volume explore these issues from a wide variety of denominational and disciplinary perspectives, drawing together ecclesiologists, professional ecumenists, sociologists, psychologists, and organizational experts.